The Death by Drowning of a Child Named Bettany

Happened only in a dream
But was a shock in the dream,
As dream shocks always are.

Despite everything, no one
Knows why dream emotions are
What they are—fleeting, intense,

Disorienting, haunting.
In the same dream as the death
Of the girl who thought she would

Be rescued if she fell in
The water, a jagged phrase
Kept surfacing, a fragment,

Something contrasting freedom
To power that the mind grasped
Hard but couldn’t hold, then this—

You can quit a little bit.
You can quit a lot of it.
You don’t have to surrender.